The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine

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Cambridge University Press, 2007 M08 13
The Healthy Jew traces the culturally revealing story of how Moses, the rabbis, and other Jewish thinkers came to be understood as medical authorities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such a radically different interpretation, by scholars and popular writers alike, resulted in new, widespread views on the salubrious effects of, for example, circumcision, Jewish sexual purity laws, and kosher foods. The Healthy Jew explores this interpretative tradition in the light of a number of broader debates over 'civilization' and 'culture', Orientalism, religion and science (in the wake of Darwin), anti-Semitism and Jewish apologetics, and the scientific and medical discoveries and debates that revolutionized the fields of bacteriology, preventive medicine, and genetics/eugenics.
 

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About the author (2007)

Mitchell B. Hart is Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. His first book, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (2000), won the Salo Baron Award for Best First Book in Jewish Studies, presented by the American Academy of Jewish Research.

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